ANNUAL REPORT 2008
Contact details:
Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies Level 4 Forgan Smith Tower The University of Queensland St Lucia Qld AUSTRALIA 4072
Ph: 61 7 3346 9764 Fax: 61 7 3365 7184 Email: [email protected] Web: www.cccs.uq.edu.au
TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ...... 3
EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES ...... 4
Public Lecture Program ...... 5
Occasional Seminar Program...... 5
Media and Cultural Studies Meetings (MACS) ...... 6
FEDERATION FELLOW PROJECT ...... 7
ARC CULTURAL RESEARCH NETWORK ...... 7
VISITORS ...... 9
Honorary Fellows ...... 10
Visiting Scholars ...... 10
Faculty Fellows ...... 10 Dr Maureen Burns ...... 10 Dr Joe Hardwick ...... 10
ADMINISTRATION ...... 11
POSTGRADUATE TRAINING ...... 11
STAFF ACTIVITIES ...... 13
Professor Graeme Turner - Director ...... 13
Associate Professor Anita Harris – Deputy Director ...... 15
Dr Mark Andrejevic ...... 16
Dr Melissa Bellanta ...... 17
Dr Melissa Gregg ...... 18
Mr John Gunders ...... 19
Dr Anna Pertierra ...... 20
Dr Jinna Tay ...... 21
Dr Zala Volčič ...... 22 Former Fellows and Affiliated Staff ...... 23
CENTRE GRANTS ...... 23
CENTRE PUBLICATIONS ...... 24
Professor Graeme Turner ...... 24 Chapters in scholarly books ...... 24 Articles in refereed journals ...... 24
Dr Mark Andrejevic ...... 24 Articles in refereed journals ...... 24
Dr Melissa Bellanta ...... 25 Chapters in scholarly books ...... 25 Articles in refereed journals ...... 25
Dr Melissa Gregg ...... 25 Articles in refereed journals ...... 25
Associate Professor Anita Harris ...... 26
Dr Zala Volčič ...... 26 Chapters in scholarly books ...... 26 Articles in refereed journals ...... 26 Articles and Book Chapters (Non-Refereed) ...... 27
CONFERENCE, KEYNOTE AND INVITED PRESENTATIONS ...... 27
Professor Graeme Turner ...... 27 Invited presentations and keynotes...... 27 Conference presentations ...... 27
Dr Mark Andrejevic ...... 27 Invited presentations and keynotes...... 27 Conference presentations ...... 28
Dr Melissa Bellanta ...... 28 Conference presentations ...... 28 Seminar Presentations: ...... 28
Dr Melissa Gregg ...... 28 Conference presentations ...... 28
Associate Professor Anita Harris ...... 29 Conference presentations ...... 29
Dr Zala Volčič ...... 29 Conference presentations ...... 29
2
Introduction
The CCCS has had perhaps its most industrious and lively year so far, with the ARC Cultural Research Network at its most active, the Federation Fellowship program at full strength with both its postdoctoral fellows in place for the whole year, one new UQ postdoctoral fellow in place, a full program of lectures, masterclasses and seminars, and a graduate course being taught from the Centre.
Highlights include the CRN-sponsored masterclass presented by Professor Charlotte Brunsdon (Warwick, UK), the month-long visit from Professor Meaghan Morris (UWS and Lingnan University, Hong Kong) who took part in our work in progress seminars as well as consulting with staff about their projects, the CRN funded lectures from Dr Jonathon Sterne (McGill), Professor Robert Allen (University of North Carolina) and Professor Tony Bennett (Open University), as well as Professor Toby Miller’s (UC Riverside) regular visit for the Federation Fellow project. The program of lectures and seminars has been successful again with particularly strong turnouts for the interdisciplinary seminars.
Staff activities over this year have included significant field work absences for Jinna Tay and Anna Pertierra, overseas research trips for Graeme Turner, Melissa Bellanta, Zala Volčič and Mark Andrejevic and a hectic round of conferences involving all staff during the mid-year semester break and over the summer. John Gunders received an Arts Faculty scholarship to work on his thesis fulltime for three months, and did this over March-July with the occasional interruption to attend to emergencies here.
Staff movements include Anita Harris’s taking maternity leave in August (she returns in February, 2009) and the birth of her son, Julian, and Melissa Gregg’s decision to move to Sydney to join her partner there in late 2008. Melissa will move her ARC APD to the University of Sydney in 2009 for six months before taking up a continuing T&R appointment in the Gender and Cultural Studies Department. She has been a wonderful contributor to the Centre, and as one of its longest serving members will be greatly missed; we wish her all the best in her new position. Kitty Van Vuuren also completed her fellowship at the end of 2007, and left to take up a position in the School of Journalism and Communication at UQ – the location from which the 2008 UQ postdoctoral fellow, Zala Volčič, had come. The CCCS was again successful in the UQ Postdoctoral Fellowships round, with Dr Anthea Taylor securing a fellowship on her third attempt.
Administratively, the departure of long-serving Centre Manager, Andrea Mitchell, was a major change for the CCCS. Andrea played a fundamental role in the Centre’s success, and was universally liked and respected for her abilities and for the highly consultative way in which she managed the office. Her replacement, Maureen McGrath, came to us from the Art Museum and has fitted in extremely well over the last year, making an excellent contribution to its financial management. In a further pleasing development on the staffing front, the Centre successfully applied to have Rebecca Ralph’s and Angela Mason’s positions resized and upgraded; they are now on levels 5 and 4 respectively.
In a highly significant move, and in response to representations from the Director, the Faculty has agreed to appoint Dr Mark Andrejevic to a continuing position in the Centre on the conclusion of his UQ postdoctoral fellowship. This is in the context of his application for a Future Fellowship, and will require him to
3 pursue other opportunities for ARC Funding. This is the first continuing appointment to be made in the CCCS, other than that of the Director, and is aimed at providing some continuity at the mid-career level as well as prospects for leadership in the future. It constitutes a significant increase in the Faculty’s commitment to the future of the CCCS.
Finally, in what is also a very significant development, the CCCS offered a graduate course on Media and Consumption to students in English, Media Studies and Art History in second semester. Convened by Melissa Gregg, and involving a teaching team of CCCS researchers (Mark Andrejevic, Melissa Gregg and Graeme Turner), this is a pleasing addition to the contributions the CCCS can make to the Faculty, and brought our researchers into formal contact with postgraduates in relevant areas for the first time. The intention is to offer such a course annually.
Professor Graeme Turner, FAHA, Director
Events and Activities
The CCCS continued to be very busy during 2008, in particular with the ongoing development of the Federation Fellowship Project and the Cultural Research Network activities. The Centre continued to promote its research activities through its public lecture and seminar programs which continue to attract strong audiences and have established themselves as an integral part of the Faculty and University’s calendars. The Centre also provides mentorship to its Fellows via provision of in-house Work in Progress meetings which offer the opportunity to all staff to participate in discussions on each other’s work in a supportive and collegial atmosphere.
4 Public Lecture Program The CCCS lecture program continues to gather momentum, building on each year’s successes, and 2008 was no different. Since its inception in 2000, the CCCS has presented a public lecture series on behalf of the Faculty of Arts, aimed at foregrounding the quality and importance of the research produced within the Faculty. In 2005 the Centre, in conjunction with EMSAH and the journal Media International Australia, also revived the series of annual lectures on media issues commemorating one of the pioneers of media studies in Australia, Professor Henry Mayer. The 2008 speaker this year was Rod Tiffen, Professor of Government and International Relations, University of Sydney whose lecture was entitled “The Spin We’re In: Media and Democracy in Post-Howard Australia” This event was attended by a large audience who enjoyed the presentation and engaged in an interesting question and answer session afterwards.
The lecture program is primarily devoted to enabling members of the Arts Faculty to outline their current research projects for the community. The presentations were again held in the University of Queensland Art Museum, Mayne Centre, helping to showcase this premier public space.
The full list of CCCS public lectures for 2008 is as follows:
Professor Charlotte Brunsdon, University of Warwick, UK 19 February 2008: Shaping the Cinematic City: Three London Journeys
Dr Rex Butler, School of English, Media Studies, and Art History, UQ 13 March 2008: A Short History of UnAustralian Art
Professor Rod Tiffen, University of Sydney 22 May 2008: The 2008 Annual Henry Mayer Lecture: The Spin We’re In: Media and Democracy in Post-Howard Australia
Professor Meaghan Morris, Lingnan University, Hong Kong 21 August 2008: Twenty years of ‘Banality in Cultural Studies’; a research problem
Associate Professor Christopher Dixon, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, UQ 18 September 2008: The West Wing is not a Documentary: Reflections on Cultural Politics in Contemporary America
Professor Tom O’Regan, School of English, Media Studies, and Art History, UQ 16 October 2008: Learning from the Gold Coast
Occasional Seminar Program The Centre's seminar program runs in parallel with the Public Lectures, providing a more narrowly focused, but still interdisciplinary avenue for the dissemination of research. The program provides a framework within which contributions from visiting overseas and interstate researchers can be incorporated, as well as work from CCCS and Faculty staff. UQ staff who held Faculty Fellowships at the Centre the previous year are expected to present the outcomes of their research project in this series as well. Finally, the seminar series is also used for special events. The 2007 program was very full, providing a clear indication of the depth and diversity of the Centre’s interests as well as the rich variety of visitors from elsewhere who have made a presentation to the Centre a feature of their itineraries.
5 The seminar program was as follows:
Professor Robert Allen, University of North Carolina, USA 11 March 2008: Going to the Show: Representing the Spatiality of Film History
Associate Professor Jason Jacobs, School of English, Media Studies, and Art History, UQ 8 April 2008: The Third Man and the BBC
Associate Professor Jo Ann Tacchi, Creative Industries, QUT 27 May 2008: Affective Rhythms in Domestic Life: Soundscapes and the Quest for Affective Equilibrium
Dr Harriot Beazley, School of Social Work & Human Services, UQ 29 July 2008: Street Youth in Transition: Becoming a street adult in Java, Indonesia
Associate Professor Jonathan Sterne, McGill University, Canada 12 August 2008: The Historical Emergence of Perceptual Coding
Dr Melissa Gregg, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, UQ 9 September 2008: Always On: Coping with Constant Connectivity
Professor Tony Bennett, Open University, UK 29 September 2008: On not watching television: character, the will, and social class
Dr Roxanne Marcotte, School of History, Philosophy, Religion and Classics, UQ 21 October 2008: (New) Muslim Discourses Online?
Dr Kayoko Hashimoto, School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies, UQ 11 November 2008: The Politics of English in Japan: Nation, Citizens and Language Policy
Media and Cultural Studies Meetings (MACS)
MACS is a cross-institutional network of early career researchers, postgraduate students, postdoctoral fellows, research assistants and sessional staff working in Media and Cultural Studies across Brisbane. Our meetings aim to provide a regular platform for discussing issues which relate to these roles as well as an opportunity to contribute to wider debates taking place in the field.
There were six sessions held during 2008, with attendances ranging from a handful of people to 25 or 30, and the three major local universities represented.
"What I Did On My Holidays": Conference Reports - 14 March 2008
The Future of the PhD in Australian Higher Education: Prof Alan Lawson, a specialist in postcolonial studies, is Dean of Students and Director of the UQ Graduate School - 9 May 2008
Non-academic jobs post PhD?: Speakers Dr Shelly Kulperger and Dr Jason Wilson - 13 June 2008
The ERA and what it means for me: Speaker: Prof Graeme Turner, Director of the CCCS, and immediate past President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities - 8 August 2008
6 Meaghan Morris in Conversation -12 September 2008
Should I Stay or Should I Go?: Academic Mobility: Speakers: Dr Peta Mitchell, Dr Mel Gregg, and Dr Zala Volčič - 10 October 2008
Federation Fellow Project
The production of the first outcome of the project, the Television Studies after TV collection is a significant milestone. It has also turned out to feed significantly into Graeme Turner’s new book, The Demotic Turn, in which the international comparative material has been particularly useful. The gathering of material for the online market dictionary was completed over 2008, and will be worked into a functioning database over 2009. Drs Pertierra and Tay both had substantial periods of fieldwork over 2008: Dr Tay in China, Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore, and Dr Pertierra in Cuba, Mexico and the Philippines. Both were working on combinations of the Federation Fellow project and their UQ Early Career Researcher grant projects. Dr Tay has 6 publications now pending from her work at the CCCS. Dr Pertierra has a book manuscript from her thesis under consideration at present, as well as an edited special issue of the International Journal of Cultural Studies on consumption in the Caribbean in press. She will be fully engaged in writing up material when she returns from her second period of field work in 2009.
In July, Graeme Turner convened a panel on the project’s work at the “Television Without Borders” conference at the University of Reading, in the UK. Graeme, Jinna Tay and CCCS alumnus Adrian Mabbott Athique presented their work to this conference. Also Jinna Tay and Graeme Turner presented work from the Fellowship project to the ‘Television and the National conference in Melbourne at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image in November. Professor Toby Miller visited the Centre in December to consult further on the project.
The next phase for the project, to be developed over 2009, is a program of joint publications from the research team before Graeme Turner takes an extended period of leave to complete research in the US in 2010.
ARC Cultural Research Network
The early part of the year was largely devoted to preparing the Annual Report for the ARC, and finalising the 2008 budget. In addition, it saw the start of the yearly round of meetings with Node Convenors and Management Committee both meeting in Brisbane. John was granted a three-month completion scholarship by the Faculty which he took from April to July, Lisa Gunders stepping in as acting project officer for the duration. Management Committee met in March, keeping John busy in the final weeks before commencing his leave. Due to various circumstances, several node proposals were not received until after the meeting and were distributed to the committee by Lisa when she took over. However the CRN Annual Report for 2007 was completed on time and sent to contributing institutions as per the requirements. A milestone of sorts was that the extremely prolonged issue of the Network Agreement between UQ and Monash was finally settled, and the Deeds signed. This had been ongoing for more than a year, with delays in the legal offices of UQ and other institutions. This meant that the Deed with UNSW could also be
7 finalised, and long-overdue funding was sent to Prof Gerard Goggin of the Cultural Technologies Node, and Dr Clifton Evers of the ECR/PG Development Node. The final quarter of the year was dominated by the CRN Annual Meeting which was held in Melbourne on the 27th and 28th October. As the penultimate meeting, this was an important time to reflect on the past progress of the Network and to determine the path for the final year of funding, and to decide what—if anything— should follow the period of formal funding. It was gratifying to see the level of enthusiasm that remains in the Network, even after four years of effort, and we have little doubt that the CRN will continue in some form after 2009. The CRN sponsored a number of high-profile visitors during 2008. Prof David Morley and Prof Charlotte Brunsdon toured the east coast between the 10th and 23rd of February, while Prof Robert C Allen consulted with staff and postgraduates and presented a well attended seminar while in Brisbane. The James Katz speaking tour took place successfully in June, while the visit by Staff meeting in the Centre Prof Jonathan Sterne of McGill University in Montreal was an important event in August. There was also a masterclass with Prof Sarah Whatmore. The first of a series of five Listening Workshops began in April and continued through the remainder of the year. There were other activities such as workshops on Media Histories, Internet Histories, GIS, Mobile Futures, Japanese Transnational Fandom, and online journalism. The Network also funded a conference on Television and the National, held in Melbourne during November. As in previous years, members of the CRN have been very successful in winning competitive research grants: ARC Discovery 2008, From Print to the Internet: The Media in Australia since 1803, Dr BL Griffen-Foley ARC Discovery 2008, From the Tap to the Bottle: an international study of the social and material life of bottled Water, A/Prof G Hawkins; Dr KD Race; Dr EC Potter ARC Discovery 2008, Young, Mobile, Networked: Mobile Media and Youth Culture in Australia, Dr GM Goggin; Ms KJ Crawford ARC Discovery 2008, Posters of the Cultural Revolution: Contemporary Chinese perspectives on an era of propaganda, Prof SJ Donald; Prof H Evans ARC Discovery 2008, Intercolonial networks of the Indian Ocean, Dr D Ghosh; Prof H Goodall; Prof S Muecke; Em/Prof MN Pearson ARC Discovery 2008, Global/Local Intersections: History, Identity and Community in a Tokyo Subculture, Dr MJ McLelland ARC Discovery 2008, Social Memory and Historical Justice: How Democratic Societies Remember and Forget the Victimisation of Minorities
8 in the Past, Prof K Neumann; Dr CL Healy; Dr MM Tumarkin; Dr L Apel; Prof Dr S Schüler-Springorum; Prof Dr H Welzer ARC Discovery 2008, Creative Suburbia: A Critical Evaluation of the Scope for Creative Cultural Development in Australia's Suburban and Peri Urban Communities, A/Prof T Flew; Prof PW Graham; Dr MN Gibson; Dr C Collis ARC Discovery 2008, Australian television and popular memory: new approaches to the cultural history of the media in the project of nation- building, Prof J Hartley; Prof G Turner; A/Prof A McKee; Dr SE Turnbull; Dr CL Healy; Dr JB Green ARC Discovery 2008, Governance, human capital and regional investment in China's new creative clusters, Dr MA Keane; Prof X Zhang ARC Discovery 2008, Mapping the movies: the changing nature of Australia's cinema circuits and their audiences 1956-1984, Prof R Maltby; Dr M Walsh; Dr K Bowles; A/Prof D Verhoeven; Prof JJ Matthews; A/Prof CA Arrowsmith ARC Linkage 2008, Information and Cultural Exchange: a study of best practices in community building, participation and cultural citizenship through creative practices, Dr I Vanni Accarigi; Dr TI Dreher; Dr D Ghosh; Dr C Ho; Dr AW Mitchell ARC Linkage 2008, Cultural Asset Mapping for Planning and Development in Regional Australia, Prof RJ Gibson; A/Prof CR Gibson; Prof J Walmsley There were also three special issue journals deriving from CRN events during 2008: Heather Goodall, “Landscapes of Meaning. South Asia-Australia Connections: Environment and People,” Transforming Cultures eJournal, 3.1 (2008) Kelly McWilliam, John Hartley, and Mark Gibson, “Digital Literacies,” Media International Australia, 128 (2008) David Carter, Kate Darian-Smith and Andrew Gorman-Murray, “Special Section: Rural Cultural Studies,” Australian Humanities Review 45 (2008) and one book publication: Mark McLelland and Gerard Goggin, editors, Internationalizing Internet Studies: Beyond Anglophone Paradigms, Routledge: 2008.
There are further publications and special issues planned for 2009 and beyond. As the CRN enters its final year of formal funding we are confident that it is placed well to continue its programmes of research into the future, drawing on the continuing enthusiasm and dedication of its participants.
Visitors
In 2008 the Centre was in demand as a destination for visitors to the University. In particular, Professor Meaghan Morris from Lingnan University in Hong Kong and University of Western Sydney spent one month here working on her own research and consulting with members of the CCCS and the wider UQ community. She also gave a public lecture on behalf of the Centre on 21 August 2008. Assistant Professor Sheila Cavanagh from York University, Canada spent a month completing a journal article and a chapter of her book project. She also participated in the Centre’s local Work in Progress series discussing her current research with the Centre Staff. Professor Toby Miller also made his regular visit to consult on the Federation Fellow project.
9 The Faculty Fellow program also continued, with two members of the Arts Faculty being awarded fellowships in 2008: Joe Hardwick and Maureen Burns. Faculty Research Fellows are provided with a set allocation of funds to enable their School to allow them teaching relief for a semester in order to bring a research or publication project to completion. They are asked to spend part of this time working in the CCCS, contributing to its seminar program and its other activities. Applications are invited from every school within the Faculty of Arts, with at least one grant per year allocated to an Early Career Researcher. These fellowships are only available to full-time staff in the Faculty of Arts at The University of Queensland and they are selected at a meeting of the CCCS Management Committee. In order to help Schools arrange replacement staff, the Faculty Fellows are chosen 18 months in advance. The Fellows for 2009 will be Dr Greg Hainge (SLCCS), Dr Isaac Dongbae Lee (SLCCS), Dr Peta Mitchell (EMSAH) and Dr Simon Perry (Music). In 2010 the Centre will host Dr Larry Duffy (SLCCS), Dr Ilana Mushin (EMSAH) and Dr Martin Crotty (HPRC).
Honorary Fellows
Professor Toby Miller, University of California, Riverside, USA. Dr Graham St John, School for Advanced Research in the Human Experience, Santa Fe, New Mexico Dr Andrea Mitchell, Office of Women, Queensland Government.
Visiting Scholars
Prof Meaghan Morris, Univesity of Lignan, Hong Kong. Assistant Professor Sheila Cavanagh, York University, Cananda
Faculty Fellows
Dr Maureen Burns During her faculty fellowship Dr Maureen Burns conducted research into, and submitted her first article on, the science comic strip Frontiers of Science. In this article Dr Burns examined how boundaries between the modes of science fiction and science fact were broached in this attempt to popularise science between 1961 and 1979. The article also demonstrates some of the ways in which political imperatives influence the types of science that should be popularised. This research will form part of a book project on science communication, to be co- authored with Dr Joan Leach. During her fellowship Dr Burns also worked with the Screen Economics Research Group (SERG) of the Australian Film and Television School on research into unrealised productions in the Australian film industry. An overview article of this project will appear late in 2009, and a book proposal for this project is currently with publishers.
Dr Joe Hardwick The CCCS Faculty Fellowship enabled Joe to carry out work towards two chapters in a monograph entitled The Wanderer Figure in le jeune cinéma français. The majority of his work focused on an article entitled “Transports privés: Claire Denis’ Vendredi soir and the mobile urban female in French cinema.” He presented the early stages of his work in the CCCS Work in Progress series in March 2008 before presenting a full version of the paper at the Australian Society for French Studies conference at the University of Melbourne in July 2009 as well as a longer version of the same paper in the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies seminar series in August 2009. He is currently reworking the paper for the UK journal French Cultural Studies. A version of this
10 will be presented in the CCCS seminar series in May 2009. The CCCS Fellowship also enabled him to carry out initial research on the films Stand-by (which will form part of a book chapter with the work on Vendredi soir) and La Haine which will also feature as a chapter in the monograph.
Administration
Maureen McGrath joined CCCS as Centre Manager on 14th January 2008 on the resignation of the previous Centre Manager, Dr Andrea Mitchell. Maureen had previously worked at The University of Queensland Art Museum for a period of 19 months as Finance and Administration Officer and prior to that in various Finance and Administrative positions within the Faculty of Health Sciences for over 10 years.
The first six months of the year were taken up with Maureen familiarising herself with the multi-faceted CCCS budgets as well as the administrative management of the Centre and carrying on the work of Dr Mitchell. She also took over as the CCCS Green Office Representative replacing Andrea who previously undertook this role. In April the Centre’s annual assessment under the Green Office Program was undertaken by the Green Office representatives of Properties and Facilities Division, UQ. The Centre improved its overall rating from 67% in 2007 to 90% in 2008 and earned the award of Most Improved Green Office Area. The award was presented at a breakfast at the UQ Staff and Graduates Club on World Environment Day, 5th June 2008.This award followed on from its 2007 award for Best New Green Office Area.
The reclassification of two of the administrative positions in the Centre was completed in August 2008 with Rebecca Ralph’s position of Event Co-ordinator being upgraded from HEW 04 to HEW 05 position and that of Angela Mason’s Administrative Assistant/Receptionist changing from HEW 03 to HEW 04.These upgrades now reflect the duties undertaken by these positions.
The new financial system (PeopleSoft) being instigated by the University in 2009 took up a fair proportion of Maureen’s time over the last six months of 2008 in terms of development of the Centre’s general ledger account structure under the new system and also in the preparation of the annual budget for 2009. Maureen has also attended the open forums held by the UniFi development team during the last six months of the year as part of the ongoing information gathering process needed to track the development of the project.
Postgraduate Training
Postgraduates affiliated with the Centre are supervised by Professor Turner, Associate Professor Harris, Dr Gregg and also by Professor Saunders. Affiliated postgraduate students in 2008 were:
Mr Matthew Campora, “Multiform Film Narrative: From the Arthouse to the Multiplex”. Supervisors Professor Graeme Turner and Dr Jane Stadler
Mr Chris Cobcroft, “Music Programming in Community Radio: Demographics, Taste, Content and Commerce,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Dr Richard Fitzgerald
Mr David Cox, “Culture jamming: strategies of dissent versus empire of signs,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Professor Tom O’Regan
11 Mr John Gunders, “A Culture of Authenticity: Popular Music, Food Television, and Travel Writing,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Assoc Prof Frances Bonner
Ms Dania Lawrence, “Billabong: The swell of international beach culture and fashion,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Professor Elizabeth Ferrier
Ms Kirsty Leishman, “Analysing Television: Representations of Psychotherapy in Quality Television Drama,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Assoc Prof Frances Bonner
Ms Jamilah Maliki, “Reality TV and cultural identities among Malaysian Malay Youths: A comparative study,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Assoc Prof Frances Bonner. Degree awarded 14/12/2008.
Ms Jacqueline McConnell, “Australian Cinema from the years 2000 to 2005: Development or stasis,” Supervisor: Professor Graeme Turner
Ms Renae O'Hanlon, “The language of youth music subcultures in Australia,” Supervisors: Dr Rob Pensalfini, Professor Graeme Turner, and Dr Ilana Mushin
Ms Susan Pearce, “Disaster reporting,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Professor Tom O'Regan
Ms Marian Redmond, “Translating white belonging in light of indigenous sovereignty,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Professor David Carter
Ms Amanda Roe, “Contemporary Australian Political Satire,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Professor David Carter
Mr Ian Rogers, “Exposing the Rock Myth: Exploring the Appeal of Narrative in Guitar Based Rock Music,” Supervisors: Dr Melissa Gregg and Professor Graeme Turner
Ms Guadalupe Rosales-Martinez, “Latin Imagery 'Latin Dance': Rhythms of Liberation and Spectacle,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Assoc Prof Alfredo Martinez Expósito
Mr Yorick Smaal, “Constructing sexuality and gender on the Brisbane homefront, 1939-1948,” Supervisors: Assoc Prof Clive Moore and Emeritus Prof Kay Saunders
Mr Andrew Stafford, “Swampland: The Australian Garage Rock Boom 1977- 1994”, Supervisors: Professor Stuart Glover and Professor Graeme Turner.
Mr John Sutton, “The impact of changes in media policy on news and current affairs services in Australia,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Professor Tom O'Regan
Ms Elizabeth Tomlinson, “The male body, represented: The shifting boundaries of the physical,” Supervisors: Professor Graeme Turner and Assoc Prof Frances Bonner
Postgraduates from around the Faculty have been also employed as research or administrative assistants working with various Centre staff. These included:
Dr Lisa Gunders Ms Bo McGrath
12 Ms Philippa Haly-Summerfield Ms Aneta Podlicka Ms Lesley Pruitt Ms Sarah Xu Mr Ian Rogers Mrs Yang Yang
Staff activities
Professor Graeme Turner - Director
Government committees have taken a considerable amount of Graeme Turner’s time this year. He was asked to chair a Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Working Party for the 2008 Review of the National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) Roadmap, for the federal Department of Science, Innovation, Industry and Research. This involved a number of trips to Canberra, many meetings, and the preparation of a bid for a new NCRIS capability which was eventually incorporated into the revised Strategic Roadmap for Australian Research Infrastructure. If NCRIS or a replacement is funded in the Federal Budget in May, 2009, this capability will be among those allocated substantial resources to develop, preserve and interconnect research data and materials for researchers in the humanities, arts and social sciences. In December, at the National Library, Graeme convened and chaired a workshop comprised of representatives of the collecting institutions and the academy which outlined a detailed plan of action for this capability if funded. A report from this workshop has been submitted to DSIIR.
In a related activity, Graeme took over the task of managing the Australian Academy of the Humanities scoping study of digitising humanities research resources, funded by the former Department of Education, Science and Training. Lesley Pruitt took on the research tasks, and a report was submitted to the Academy and through them to the Government in August. A monograph version of the report has been published as Towards an Australian Humanities Digital Archive by the Academy.
Graeme was also asked to serve on the Humanities Indicators Sub-Committee for the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) preparations, charged with the task of developing an appropriate group of research excellence indicators for the humanities disciplines. This has involved several meetings in Canberra and a certain amount of out-of-session work as well.
Finally, the Federal Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Kim Carr, announced in September that Graeme was to be appointed as the humanities representative on the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council. This appointment has proceeded but, due to the extremely short notice provided, he was unable to attend his first meeting in October.
Nonetheless, he has been able to do some more conventional academic work as well. In January, he was the recipient of a National Association of Television Programming Executives (NATPE) Faculty Fellowship, which enabled him to attend the NATPE convention in Las Vegas. This has proven an invaluable means of updating his knowledge of current concerns within the American television and related industries. In September, Graeme and Jinna Tay submitted their manuscript for the first book to come out of the Federation Fellowship project – a
13 co-edited international collection, called Television Studies after TV: Understanding television in the post-broadcast era. It will be published by Routledge (UK) in May, 2009. Graeme and Jinna both contributed a chapter as well as co-writing the introduction and other framing materials. Other CCCS fellows who contributed are Mark Andrejevic and Zala Volčič, as well as CCCS alumni Adrian Athique and honorary professor Toby Miller.
Graeme also contributed a chapter for a new collection on digital TV, edited by James Bennett and Nikki Strange and to be published by Duke University Press, a contribution to a handbook on media and cultural theory from the US, a short piece on ‘my media studies’ for the 10th anniversary issue of the journal Television and New Media, and a similar kind of piece on current trends in journalism for the 10th anniversary issue of the journal Journalism: Theory, practice and criticism. Graeme spent several weeks in the UK over June/July, presenting a paper at a conference on television at Reading University, completing some research on British television, and meeting with colleagues, publishers, and the head of the Arts and Humanities Research Council of England, Philip Essler, to discuss NCRIS issues. He also began work on a new sole- authored book, The Demotic Turn: Ordinary people and the media, to be published by Sage in the prestigious Theory, Culture and Society series in late 2009. Finally, in November, he presented a plenary paper, ‘Television and the nation: Does this matter any more?’, to the Television and the National Conference in Melbourne.
He also continued to direct the CCCS’s activities, convene the Cultural Research Network, and run the Federation Fellow research project (this is reported on separately). In second semester, together with Mark Andrejevic, he was part of the teaching team for the graduate course convened by Melissa Gregg and offered to postgraduate students in Staff Work in Progress Seminar English, Media Studies and Art History. In other activities, Graeme chaired the Faculty review of Austlit, filled in for Academy president Ian Donaldson at a National Academies Forum executive meeting in Canberra, attended a meeting of the advisory board for the Centre for Media History at Macquarie University, presented a lecture for the School of Journalism and Communication on television current affairs and for EMSAH on Australian studies, attended four meetings of the Council for the Australian Academy of the Humanities, spoke at an international symposium on the future of the humanities at Monash University, attended a meeting of the Advisory Board and the launch of the Centre for Journalism and Social Research at the University of New South Wales, served on professorial selection committees at UNSW and LaTrobe, participated in the CRN outreach program via a mentoring visit to the University of South Australia, represented the Academy at the National Academies Workshop in response to the release of the Cutler Review, served on the Faculty Executive, the Faculty Research Committee, the Cultural History management board and the CHED management board.
14 Associate Professor Anita Harris – Deputy Director
In December 2007, Anita Harris presented papers at the Racisms in the New World Order conference (University of the Sunshine Coast, Caloundra), and at the symposium Emerging Forms of Youth Engagement (University of Melbourne, Melbourne). This symposium was an activity that she coordinated out of her ARC project, and proved to be a highly successful and enjoyable event attended by participants from the US, the Netherlands, Japan and New Zealand. She has received strong interest in a proposal for a special issue of the international refereed journal Young out of the papers from this symposium and is putting together a submission for this journal.
Anita has also had a paper accepted for the Journal of Youth Studies to be published in 2009. After a summer break, She worked on two new papers, one for the Australian Political Science Association conference in July 2008, and one for a workshop she is organised entitled Pedestrian Crossings: Youth and Everyday Multiculturalism; an international event with speakers from Europe, the UK and elsewhere, held in Prato, Italy in June 2008. She has commenced two new associate supervisions of PhD candidates, one in association with Dr Melissa Gregg and another with the School of Political Science and International Studies.
During the first quarter of 2008 Anita undertook a book proposal review for Temple University Press, and has assisted the Ethnic Community Councils of Queensland with a funding proposal for a programme for young women of culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds. She also scheduled the CCCS work in progress seminar series for semester 1, 2008.
Anita Harris submitted two papers during the second quarter 2008; one to Social Identities and another (with Johanna Wyn) to the Australian Journal of Political Science. She published a research report from her ARC project (Rethinking Youth Citizenship, Youth Research Centre, Melbourne, April 2008) with Johanna Wyn and Salem Younes. She worked on a book proposal on young people and everyday multiculturalism. She had a proposal accepted to edit a special issue on everyday forms of youth participation by the Sage journal Young, and is commenced the guest editorial work for this.
In June she travelled to the UK and Italy, where she gave papers, met with research partners, undertook PhD student consultation and ran a workshop. She presented a paper at a seminar series at the University of Bath, UK, and at the workshop that she organised at the Monash centre in Prato, Italy, entitled Pedestrian Crossings: Youth and Everyday Multiculturalism. This was an international event with speakers from Europe, the UK, Hong Kong and Canada. The workshop was a very enjoyable and successful experience, and already the Journal of Intercultural Studies has expressed interest in developing a special themed issue from the papers presented.
During the third quarter of 2008 Anita appointed a research fellow, Dr Sarah Lantz, to her ARC project. She was active on the Youth Affairs Network of Queensland Racism executive committee. She also completed her second term as facilitator of the CCCS work in progress seminar series, which have again provided a congenial environment for the Centre’s researchers to discuss their work. Dr Melissa Bellanta took over coordination in semester 2, 2008. Anita commenced maternity leave in August 2008, and worked hard to complete two more papers as well as her book proposal and a proposal for a special journal issue out of the Prato workshop. She also worked towards getting her near- completion PhD student into the examination process before she took leave. Finally, she is presented a paper at the Australian Political Science Association
15 conference in early July and completed manuscript reviews for Citizenship Studies and Youth Studies Australia.
Dr Mark Andrejevic
Mark returned from a three month break from leave without pay (arriving back at the Centre on 3rd January 2008). He settled in and commenced work on several projects, including a book chapter on risk, surveillance, and online poker, as well as an article for a special issue of Media International Australia on data mining, customized advertising, and video games. He is also worked on a piece for the British journal Soundings on social networks and peer surveillance.
At the same time, Mark laid the groundwork for a larger project on attitudes toward online surveillance that will include a policy component and a survey research component. He was named as a research collaborator on a $2.5 million research grant on surveillance that is based in Canada. He also had an article published in Television and New Media (Andrejevic, M. (2008) “Watching Television without Pity: The Productivity of Online Fans” Television & New Media, Vol. 9 Issue 1, p24-46). He participated in a symposium at QUT on video games, law and policy and attended a workshop on consumer privacy at the Centre for Cyberspace Law and Policy at the University of New South Wales.
During the second quarter of 2008 Mark completed revisions on two journal articles - an overview of the relevance of the theories of Michel Foucault for the field of journalism studies (to be published in the journal, Journalism Studies), and an article on social networking sites for the British journal, Soundings. He also travelled to the United States to attend two conferences: The Business and Law of Online Advertising held by the Samuelson Center at the University of California at Berkeley and the Computers, Freedom, and Privacy Conference held in New Haven, CT. During his time in the United States he also completed a proposal for a UQ Foundation Research Excellence Award and met with several experts on privacy issues and online surveillance. Finally, he attended a meeting of the New Transparencies: Surveillance and Social Sorting Project at Queen’s University Ontario – a project on which he has been named a collaborator. Mark continues to work on ongoing projects: two book chapters, two journal articles, and a keynote speech. He also had one co-authored article (with Zala Volčič accepted for publication in the Canadian Journal of Communication
Over winter Mark worked on three articles and one book chapter. One of the articles, on the politics of reality TV, is the basis for a keynote talk he delivered in September 2008 at the Reel Politics Conference at Kadir Has University in Istanbul Turkey. He also completed the draft of an article on interactive advertising in video games for a gaming-themed issue of Media International Australia. Other projects Mark completed during this period include a chapter on consumer monitoring in the television industry for a book on the future of television studies edited by Graeme Turner and Jinna Tay as well as an article on ‘Media Studies 2.0’ for a special edition of Westminster Papers in Communication and Culture. In addition to writing, Mark has been doing some teaching, in partnership with Graeme Turner and Melissa Gregg for a graduate course titled, “Advanced Cultural Studies: The Work of Media Consumption.”
During the period October to December 2008 Mark presented his research at a symposium on reality TV and politics at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Pennsylvania. he completed two grant applications, one for a Future Fellowship and one for an ARC Discovery grant. He completed two book chapters, one for an edited collection based on the conference I attended in September on reality TV and one for a book based on the Annenberg Symposium.
16 He also had a chapter published in the second edition of Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture (edited by Susan Murray and Laurie Ouellette, NYU Press). Mark conducted research in New York City on two groups, iWitness and The Glass Bead Collective, both of which monitor law enforcement agencies at public events to prevent abuses of power and crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly. This work will be included in an article based on the proceedings of a surveillance workshop he will attend in 2009.
Dr Melissa Bellanta
At the beginning of 2008, Melissa spent a fortnight researching at the State Libraries of Victoria and New South Wales. Since then, she has written two chapters for edited collections. The first is a chapter on the American spiritualist performers, the Davenport brothers, who toured Australia in the 1870s. It will appear in a book edited by Robert Dixon and Veronica Kelly on Australian modernities, published by Sydney University Press. The second chapter will appear in a book called Crucial Moments in Australian History, edited by UQ’s Martin Crotty and David Roberts, and published by UNSW Press. Both books will appear in print in 2008. Melissa also been worked on revisions for articles to appear in the Journal of Australian Studies, M/C and History Australia.
Melissa’s other key task this year was to begin as book reviews editor for the Journal of Australian Studies. The first series of reviews solicited and edited by her appeared in the journal’s mid-year issue. Getting in touch with reviewers for the journal has been a great way for her to make contacts with historians and other scholars working in Australian studies.
During April to June 2008 Melissa had articles appear in Australasian Drama Studies, the Journal of Australian Studies, M/C, and History Australia. She completed substantial revisions on an article which appeared in Australian Historical Studies, and another in the Journal of Social History, an American- based publication – her first foray into a transnational (rather than Australian- based) historical forum.
Melissa also gave a seminar to EMSAH, an interview on community radio, written a book review on David Malouf’s poetry, and a referee’s report for an article submitted to History Australia. She has continued acting as Book Reviews Editor for the Journal of Australian Studies, and to make regular contributions to her blog.
The lion’s share of Melissa’s time has been spent researching and writing four papers for conferences which took place later in 2008 (two in Melbourne in July, and two in the United Kingdom in September). These formed the basis of the early career grant application and book proposal that she wrote over the third quarter of the year. To help her complete these, she engaged a research assistant and who would provide all the new material soon to arrive in her inbox. She also created a private blog which she has begun using as a repository for all her research material obtained since arriving at UQ last year.
Over the third quarter of 2008, Melissa presented at conferences in a number of places: at the Australian Historical Association’s annual conference and the Network for Research into Women’s History conference (both in Melbourne), and at the British Association of Victorian Studies and British Association of Australian Studies conferences (both in England). She spent a week’s research in England in mid-September, visiting the National Fairground Archive at the University of Sheffield and a local library at Tower Hamlets in London, where she looked at popular theatrical material from London’s East End around the turn of the
17 twentieth century. The biggest share of Melissa’s time was spent writing a book proposal based on her research into larrikin audiences and Australian theatre, tentatively entitled Perfumed Ned and Rorty Kate: Larrikins, Theatre and Australian Culture, 1870-1920. In mid-September, she also submitted an Early Career Research Grant application for the same project.
Melissa spent much of the last quarter of 2008 writing an application for an ARC postdoctoral fellowship and drafting more of her book, now tentatively titled Larrikins: A Cultural History, 1870-1920. She was successful in her application for a UQ Early Career Grant to further this book project, much of which she intends to spend on research assistance. Clay Djubal, an expert in Australian popular theatre during the 1870-1920 period, will accordingly begin assisting her with research in late January 2009. Melissa also wrote two book reviews and five abstracts for conferences in 2009; presented at a UQ Department of History work-in-progress day; continued as book reviews editor of the Journal of Australian Studies; and sent out a call for papers for a day conference she is organising for the Network for Research in Women’s History in July 2009.
Dr Melissa Gregg
Melissa began the year finishing off her commentary piece for Feminist Media Studies which was accepted for publication. She also finalised the introduction to The Affect Reader with her co-editor, Greg Seigworth
Melissa also read through the transcripts from her ARC project and presented a public seminar on the findings later in the year as part of the CCCS series. She is read a lot of literature on work-life balance and management theory to contextualise her findings, and wrote an article on workplace culture that was submitted for publication in Cultural Politics.
Work continued on the online cultural studies book Melissa is writing in collaboration with Catherine Driscoll, with a couple of writing and planning meetings already held throughout the year. The new timetable for completion means that the book was finished in time for conference presentations planned for Crossroads in Cultural Studies and the Association of Internet Researchers in July and October 2008.
After preparing for and attending two masterclasses in Sydney and Brisbane in February, Melissa also participated in a CRN workshop on Rural Cultural Studies at the University of New South Wales at the beginning of March, where she also met with fellow CRN colleagues to begin planning a conference for late 2009.
During the period April to June 2008 Melissa attended a number of events related to her work on mobile technology, including a CRN wireless workshop in Adelaide and an internet history symposium in Perth. She also attended a workshop on affect theory in Sydney at the College of Fine Art. Melissa continued working on two ongoing book projects, The Affect Reader edited collection (now contracted to Duke UP) and the online cultural studies book with Catherine Driscoll. Both manuscripts will be submitted to publishers by year’s end. She also worked on developing some new projects extending her research into workplace culture (a project looking at depictions of work on television) and domestic media consumption (an ethnography of rural women’s technology use in collaboration with the Country Women’s Association).
The third quarter of 2008 saw Melissa giving a paper at the CCI conference, Creating Value: Beyond Commerce and Commons, held at Brisbane’s Exhibition and Convention Centre. This was the first paper to showcase material from her
18 APD interviews. She then travelled to Kingston Jamaica to attend the ACS Crossroads in Cultural Studies conference where she presented work from her co- authored book and was also re-elected to the ACS Board. She spent time in Los Angeles meeting contacts in the television industry in preparation for planned projects. On return Melissa was an invited respondent and RMIT technology symposium run by visiting scholars from the UK and industry collaborators. In second semester Melissa began teaching a graduate course in Advanced Cultural Studies with Mark Andrejevic and Graeme Turner. The course met fortnightly and is the first teaching unit the Centre has offered. She gave papers at the Affect at the Human/Machine Interface symposium at The University of Melbourne and in the Centre’s own seminar series. During this period the second round of interviews for Melissa’s APD project were completed with the help of some new research assistants, Sarah Xu, Bo McGrath and Ian Rogers.
From October to December 2008 Melissa was involved in a number of events including the Cultural Research Network annual meeting in Melbourne, the "Television and the National" Conference at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image, and a workshop with CRN and European colleagues researching broadband and online cultures hosted by RMIT in Melbourne. For these events Melissa wrote two conference papers, one on the television series Underbelly that has since been invited for publication, and a paper on creative workplaces depicted on television. She also contributed to planning discussions for two new projects facilitated by the CRN: a series of initiatives addressing rural broadband provision and a national conference on academic labour to be held in 2010.
Melissa also continued her writing on affect theory, finishing the revisions to a book manuscript edited in collaboration with Dr Gregory Seigworth and another invited chapter for an edited collection on feminist methodology. Melissa spent this period working from Sydney University to consolidate her collaboration with Dr Catherine Driscoll. This led to the completion of another co-authored article to be published in a special issue of a new journal, Emotion, Society and Space, with further publications scheduled for the new year.
Mr John Gunders
As related in the CRN report, two separate visits by international scholars kept John busy in the early part of the year. Renowned international researchers Prof David Morley and Prof Charlotte Brunsdon toured the east coast, while in March the CRN hosted Prof Robert C Allen who presented in Brisbane, Sydney, and Wollongong. Later in the year there were also visits by Prof James Katz, Prof Jonathan Sterne, and Prof Sarah Whatmore. While not directly involved in the organisation of many of the Network’s events, John has oversight of the global budget, and sometimes keeping track of the funds held in the nodes seems like a full-time job. There were no major problems however, and the CRN’s activities continued without hindrance.
There was also a lot of additional work surrounding the introduction of the university’s new finance system and towards the end of the year John had to spent a lot of time re-coding the 2009 budget to account for additional categories and funding sources.
John was successful in his application for a Faculty of Arts Completion Scholarship that saw him taking three months leave without pay in order to move his PhD thesis towards completion. During his absence, his position was filled on a part- time basis by Lisa Gunders. The leave enabled John to complete a substantial potion of his thesis, as well as an article deriving from an earlier chapter which was accepted by the journal Emotion, Space, and Society for publication in 2009.
19 In September he presented a lecture on “Cultural Studies Theory” to students enrolled in JOUR2211, “Introduction to Communication Theory” for Dr Kitty van Vuuren.
John continues to organise Monthly MACS. There six meetings during 2008: March - "What I Did On My Holidays": Conference Reports; May - The Future of the PhD in Australian Higher Education; June - Non-academic jobs post PhD?; August - The ERA and what it means for me; September - Meaghan Morris in Conversation; and October - Should I Stay or Should I Go?, a session on academic mobility.
As the final year of the CRN’s funding approaches John is conscious of the impending end of his contract and is starting to make plans for his future. The primary aspect of this is the completion of his PhD thesis, followed by a concerted effort to increase his publications and research profile. In the meantime, 2009 looks like being an exciting year in terms of CRN activities, to which he is looking forward with enthusiasm.
Dr Anna Pertierra
Anna Pertierra began work at the Centre in early February 2008 with the initial settling in period involved with preparing the early stages of her Federation Fellowship research. She planned her travel itinerary, budget, and a brief project outline in addition to reading relevant literature on media in Latin America. Anna also completed revisions to a journal paper for publication and worked on a book manuscript based upon her PhD thesis. In addition to attending induction sessions at UQ, Anna also been meeting with relevant UQ academics both at the Centre and across the Faculties of Arts and Social Sciences. Anna also undertook preparation to give seminar papers in April 2008 and May 2008 in the Department of Anthropology and the School of Languages and Literatures.
Anna completed a book manuscript based on her doctoral thesis which was being considered for publication by the University of Indiana Press. In addition to this Anna edited a special issue of International Journal of Cultural Studies for January 2009 and made revisions as the result of peer review comments to two journal papers. Anna has been preparing for field research from August to December 2008, including finalising travel and budgetary arrangements, obtaining ethical clearance, and researching material for literature review.
During the second half of 2008 Anna was conducting field research in Mexico and the Philippines. In Chetumal, Mexico from late September to late November, she did a pilot study in preparation for further research in 2009. Anna interviewed urban television consumers from two income groups, reviewed local literature, met with local academics and presented a lecture on Urban Anthropology at the University of Quintana Roo. While in Mexico Anna also attended the Seminar on Migration from the Southern Border (in Chetumal) and the First International Congress of Social Scientists in Southeast Mexico (in Cancun). In late November Anna left Mexico for Manila, Philippines, where she conducted pilot research on television consumption in collaboration with a local research assistant (Maria Jovita Zarate, University of the Philippines).
While in Manila, Anna oversaw interviews with ten television viewers from lower class and middle class households and prepared a literature review of local scholarship on media consumption. Anna also received Tagalog language tuition, and participated in two scholarly events, a UQ-UP Los Baños workshop on social theory and swidden agriculture, and the First PACLAS Conference on Philippine- Latin American relations. In addition to her fieldwork over this quarter, Anna
20 wrote two book reviews, for the Journal of Latin American Studies and the Australian Journal of Anthropology.
Dr Jinna Tay
In the first three months of 2008, Jinna started compiling and examining the primary data she collected over the last few months of 2007. Out of these materials, she wrote up three abstracts for three work in progress articles that are directed towards the Federation Fellow research project. There are - the Asian Idol phenomenon; the development and professionalisation of Singapore media; and the regional response of Taipei, Hong Kong and Singapore to the development of CCTV China.
She also examined an Honours thesis and reviewed an article for International Journal of Cultural Studies. She also interviewed and selected research assistants for the research project.
After being successful in procuring a New Staff Research Start Up Grant towards the end of 2007, Jinna made plans towards the execution of the research project on fashion journalism in Asia, and centrally looking at the Beijing Olympics as one of the case-studies. As part of the organisation of the research work, she made contact with a researcher at Murdoch Press on fashion magazines and other Chinese researchers visiting and based in Brisbane. She also submitted an abstract for a University of Westminster conference in June 2008 when she will be there as part of a panel for the Reading University Television conference. The fashion research group which Jinna started last year is gearing up for the next meeting in April 2008.
In April, Jinna visited and presented a paper at the Asian Research Institute, National University of Singapore. This paper on Asian Idol phenomenon emerged from her last research trip to Singapore. She also continued to develop her research on the Federation Fellow project with new research assistant Yang Yang who will assist in the translation of texts and acquiring of Chinese language articles, while also completing the Chinese component of the Market dictionary project (one aspect of the FF project).
In May, Jinna concentrated on research and writing up of the conference papers for June 2008. Out of this process, she also decided to centre the television research on the Chinese animation industry. Jinna presented in two conferences in June, one at the University of Westminster, China Media Today conference and the other at Reading University, Television without Borders: Transfers, Translations and Transnational Exchange. She also attended a Global Investigative Journalism conference at the University of Westminster
As part of the preparation for research in Beijing, Jinna also managed to form some networks with other visiting Chinese University of Communication postgraduate researchers at the Reading and Westminster Conferences. Jinna and Graeme Turner met up with the editor from Routledge who is publishing their co- edited book. Outside of the Fed Fellow Research, CUFF fashion group hosted a seminar with curator Lauren Parker from Victoria & Albert Museum at the CCCS seminar room on the China Design Now exhibition.
Jinna was in Singapore for the first three weeks of July arranging for her visa to China, Beijing. During her time there, she also organised a panel for the Television and the National at La Trobe University, November 2008 from amongst the new Asian academic networks that she has established. The panel was accepted. In August, Jinna was in Beijing to do Olympics media research as well
21 as her fashion journalism update. She collected primary materials from newspapers, to magazines, news clips, notes and observations and interviews with participants, news commentators, and academics on the scene. For fashion journalism she interviewed the staff of Vision Magazine in Beijing and made contacts with the China Vogue team. In September, she worked towards finishing up the editing and writing of the Television Studies after TV book with Graeme Turner. She then collated and transcribed the notes, interviews and materials she collected during the month of August.
In September 2008 Jinna co-edited Television Studies after TV book with Graeme Turner and finished up other details such as the selection of cover image and the updates over missing references, bibliography and proofs over the next few months. Jinna was also invited to submit to a special issue on Cultural Adaptation in Continuum Journal which has been accepted for book publication by Taylor and Francis. She submitted the final draft at the end of October. She organized a panel on Transnational Asian Television for the TV and the National Conference, Latrobe University, Melbourne in early December. As part of the panel, she gave a paper on Asian Idol after which the panel came together to decide to submit as a special issue with Jinna as one of the co-editors. She also attended Globalising of Advertising in Asia symposium organized by Professor John Sinclair at Melbourne University. There she met several other key China studies experts and possible collaborators in fashion journalism.
Dr Zala Volčič
Zala joined the Centre in the middle of February 2008 from the School of Journalism and Communications with renewed energy to continue to work on two of her articles. In addition, she prepared for her fieldwork to the Balkans in order to start a project on media, identity, and nostalgia in Eastern Europe.
The first article dealt with the self-help discourses in Slovene President Drnovsek’s blog, which he uses as the main tool to communicate with the Slovene public. She explored Drnovsek’s self-help discourse as a way of approaching some issues associated with the “post-socialist” condition. Zala suggests that his discourse attempts to direct citizens towards a ‘proper’ understanding of the social changes caused by the collapse of socialism and the rise of (neo) liberalism. Furthermore, his discourse advises the citizens how to ‘empower’ themselves during insecure economic times. The article is due to appear in Critical Discourse Studies in 2009.
The second article explores how young Serbian intellectuals interpret and further reconceptualise the global reactions of the publication of the Prophet Muhammad cartoons. On the basis of in-depth interviews and critical discourse analysis Zala wants to show how the Serbian mainstream discourses frame the “cartoon crisis” in a specific way – Muslims continue to be labelled as “fundamentalists” and “terrorists”. The article was published in Christian-Muslim Relations Journal. Additionally, in May 2008, an article “Technological developments in Central- Eastern Europe: A case-study of a computer literacy project in Slovenia” (with Karmen Erjavec) was published in Information Communication & Society.
The second quarter of 2008 saw Zala preparing for and undertaking fieldwork for two months for her research project in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, and Macedonia. This time spent in the Balkans was very productive and offered some intriguing insights in the region. Zala reported that the Balkans region “still struggles with this paradoxical positioning … as geographically being part of Europe, but conceptually excluded from the European cultural, political, and economical space...”.
22 She presented some of her findings in a Work-in-Progress seminar to staff of the Centre in August 2008.The article “Former Yugoslavia on the World Wide Web: Commercialization and Branding of Nation-states” that Zala worked on continuously during 2008 was published in the International Communication Journal, Gazette.
The third quarter of 2008 found Zala busy working on a number of writing tasks. In July she devoted her time to working on two articles “The Struggle to Express, Create and Represent in the Balkans” (to be published in globalization series, UCLA) and “Media, Identity, and Gender: Tracking Feminist Media and Journalism Theories and Methodologies” that was published in Medijska Istrazivanja, Croatian Journal for Journalism and the Media.
August 2008 was spent working on a chapter of “Television in the Balkans: The Rise of Commercial Nationalism” with Graeme Turner and preparing for a Work- in-Progress seminar on 19th August which discussed her fieldwork in the Balkans in April and May 2008.
Zala also undertook more fieldwork in September 2008 in Turkey. While there she attended a conference “Reel Politics” at Kadir Has University in Istanbul Turkey. This conference dealt with the democratic potential of reality television. The presentations were organized around several thematic sessions some of which were convergences and divergences; reality television & factual programming; cross-cultural identity and politics; racial politics and reality television; and audience reception and discussion of daily politics. She also was invited while in Turkey to deliver a guest lecture on her work at Yildiz Teknik Universitesi, Istanbul. This guest lecture on Thursday 18th September 2008 was well received by those in attendance.
In November, Zala attended a conference at Annenberg School of Communication, on Global Perspectives on the Politics of Reality TV. She presented an article together with Mark Andrejevic on nationalism and identity on the Balkan Reality show. She also talked about her article on Civil Society and Resistance Strategies that was published in December 2008 in Global Journal/Communication for Development and Social Change.
Former Fellows and Affiliated Staff
Dr Kitty van Vuuren, one of the Centre’s Fellows left at the end of 2007 but maintains ties with Centre staff. Dr Graham St John is an Honorary Research Associate, while Professor Kay Saunders AM, Director of the Brisbane Institute, remains a Research Affiliate of the Centre.
Centre Grants
Australian Research Council (2006-2011), Television in the post-broadcast era: the role of old and new media in the formation of national communities, Turner, G., $1,581,110
Australian Research Council (2005 – 2009), The ARC Cultural Research Network, Turner, G., $1,750,000
University of Queensland (2007-2008), Online Intimacy: Public and private life in a network society, Gregg, M.C. $55,000
23 Australian Research Council (2007-2010), Working from home: New media technology, workplace culture and the changing nature of domesticity, Gregg, M.C. $233,553
University of Queensland Mid-Career Research Fellowship, University of Queensland (2007-2012). UQ Mid-Career Research Fellowship Start-up Funding: Young Australians and multicultural identity, Harris, A.L. $198,666.
Australian Research Council (2007-2008), Youth civic participation and social connection in post-industrial society: a comparative analysis. Harris, A.L., Wyn, J.G. $157,341.
University of Queensland (2007-2008), Chinese Media in Transition: Beijing Olympics & Lifestyle Journalism, Tay, J. $11,734
University of Queensland (2008-2009), Media, globalisation and consumption in Asia and Latin America, Pertierra, A. $12000.
Australian Research Council Discovery (2008-2012), Australian Television and popular memory, Lead CI Professor John Hartley (QUT) with Turner, G., McKee, A., Healy, C. Turnbull S. $172,000
Centre Publications
Professor Graeme Turner
Chapters in scholarly books
“Critical literacy, cultural literacy and the English school curriculum in Australia” in Sue Owen, (ed.) Richard Hoggart and Cultural Studies, Palgrave, London, 2008, pp.158-170.
“Film and Cultural Studies” in James Donald and Michael Renov (ed.) The Sage Handbook of Film Studies, Sage, London, 2008, pp. 270-284.
“The meaning and significance of celebrity” (with Frances Bonner and P.David Marshall), in A.Biressi and H.Nunn (eds.) (extract from Fame Games) The Tabloid Culture Reader, Open University Press, Maidenhead, 2008 pp 141- 148.
Articles in refereed journals
“The cosmopolitan city and its Other: the ethnicising of the Australian suburb”, Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 9:4, (2008), pp 568-582.
“What is Television?: Comparing media systems in the post-broadcast era”, (with Jinna Tay) Media International Australia, Special Issue Beyond Broadcasting, No. 126, February, 2008, pp 71-81.
Dr Mark Andrejevic
Articles in refereed journals
“Watching Television Without Pity: The Productivity of Online Fans,” Television & New Media, Vol. 9 Issue 1 (2008), pp. 24-46.
24 “Theory Review: Power, Knowledge, and Governance: Foucault’s Relevance to Journalism Studies.” Journalism Studies, 9(4), (2008) pp. 605-614.
“The Wealth of Online Communities.” Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture. Issue 39: Summer, (2008) pp.75-87.
“Interview With Graeme Turner: February 12, 2008, Brisbane, Australia.” Journal of Communication Inquiry. 32(3): (2008) pp. 217-229
“Watching the Voyeurs” in Murray, S. and Ouellette, L. (Eds.) Reality TV: Remaking Television Culture, Second Edition. NYU Press, (2008) pp. 121- 137.
Dr Melissa Bellanta
Chapters in scholarly books
“August 1890: The Great Strike”. In Martin Crotty and David Roberts (eds) Crucial Moments in Australian History. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 2008.
“The Davenport Brothers in Australia, 1876”. In Robert Dixon and Veronica Kelly (eds) Impact of the Modern: Everyday Modernities in Australia. Sydney: University of Sydney Press, 2008.
Articles in refereed journals
“A Flight From Domesticity?: The Manhood of George Napier Birks”, Australian Historical Studies 39.3: (2008) pp.322–37.
“A Man of Civic Sentiment: The Case of William Guthrie Spence”, Journal of Australian Studies 2:1: (2008) pp. 63-77.
“The Larrikins’ Hop: Larrikinism and Late-Colonial Popular Theatre”, Australasian Drama Studies 52: (2008) pp. 131-47.
“Feminism, Mateship and the Brotherhood of Man in 1890s Adelaide”, History Australia 5(1): (2008) 7.1-7.14.
“Engineering the Kingdom of God: Irrigation, Science and the ‘Social Christian’ Millennium, 1880-1914”. Journal of Religious History 32:1: (2008) pp. 1– 15.
“Voting For Pleasure, Or, A View From a Late-Victorian Theatre Gallery”. M/C (2008): 10/11.6.
Dr Melissa Gregg
Articles in refereed journals
“Banal Bohemia: Blogging from the Ivory Tower Hotdesk” Feature Report, Convergence: The Journal of Research into New Media Technologies Vol 14, 4 (2008).
“The Normalisation of Flexible Female Labour in the Information Economy,” Feminist Media Studies Vol 8, 3 (2008).
25 (with Catherine Driscoll) “Message me: Temporality, location and everyday technologies,” Media International Australia, Special Issue on Digital Literacy, 128 (2008)
(with Fiona Nicoll) “Successful Resistance or Resisting Success? Surviving the Silent Social Order of the Theory Classroom” Social Epistemology Vol 22, 2 (April 2008)
“Communicating Investment: Cultural Studies, Affect and the Academy,” Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies Vol 30, 1 (2008).
Review of Mark Nunes, Cyberspaces of Everyday Life, Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies Vol 14(1): 2008.
Associate Professor Anita Harris
Chapters in scholarly books
“Youth Cultures and Feminist Politics: An Introduction”, Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism, Anita Harris (ed), Routledge: New York, 2008.
“Feminism, Youth Politics and Generational Change” (with Chilla Bulbeck), Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism, Anita Harris (ed), Routledge: New York, 2008.
“Youth Experiences of Surveillance: A Cross National Analysis”, (with Michelle Fine, Nick Freudenberg and Martin D. Ruck), Globalizing the Streets: Cross-Cultural Studies of Youth Resistance and Marginalization, David C. Brotherton and Michael Flynn (eds), Columbia University Press: New York, 2008.
Edited book:
Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism, (edited) Routledge: New York, 2008.
Journal article:
“Young Women, Late Modern Politics and the Participatory Potential of Online Cultures”, Journal of Youth Studies, 11, (5), (2008) pp.481-495.
Dr Zala Volčič
Chapters in scholarly books Mediji in Identiteta [Media and Identity]. Slovenia/Maribor: University of Maribor Press, 2008.
Articles in refereed journals
“Former Yugoslavia on the World Wide Web: Commercialization and Branding of Nation-states.” Published in the International Communication Journal, Gazette, 70(5), 2008, pp. 395–413.
26 “Media, Identity, and Gender: Tracking Feminist Media and Journalism Theories and Methodologies.” Published in Medijska Istrazivanja, Croatian Journal for Journalism and the Media, 14(1), 2008, pp. 5-20.
“We Defend Western Civilization – Serbian Representations of a Cartoon Conflict” (with Karmen Erjavec). In ICMR / Islam and Christian-Muslim Relations, 19(3), 2008, pp. 305-321.
“Technological developments in Central-Eastern Europe: A case-study of a computer literacy project in Slovenia” (with Karmen Erjavec). In Information Communication & Society, (11)3, 2008, pp. 326-347.
“They are all anti-war profiteers!' Contesting civil society landscapes in Serbia". In Global Journal/Communication for Development and Social Change (2) 3, 2008.
Articles and Book Chapters (Non-Refereed)
“The Representations of the Balkans and South Africa” (with Eric Louw), in Image of the Balkans: Historical Approaches and Communication Perspectives (ed. Minka Zlateva). Sofia: Unesco Press, 2008.
“Serbian Way of Social Change: Otpor! and its anti-Milosevic’s Resistance Strategies,” in Social Change Reader, (1) 1, St. Lucia: UQ Press, 2008.
Conference, Keynote and Invited Presentations
Professor Graeme Turner
Invited presentations and keynotes
Plenary address, The Future of the Humanities Symposium, Monash University, July, 2008.
“Television and the nation: Does this matter anymore?” plenary presentation, Television and the Nation, Australian Centre for the Moving image, November, 2008.
Conference presentations
“Comparative Perspectives on Post-Broadcast Television: Asia, India and the West”, Television without Borders, University of Reading, UK, 2008.
Dr Mark Andrejevic
Invited presentations and keynotes
"Reality TV is not Democratic -- It's Psychotic." Keynote presentation for Reel Politics: Reality Television as a Platform for Political Discourse, International Reality Television Conference, Kadir Has University, Istanbul, Turkey. 12 – 14 September 2008.
27 Conference presentations
"Consumer information, monitoring, and game design." Panel presentation to the Computer Games, Law, Policy and Regulation Symposium, Queensland University of Technology, 14 – 15 February 2008.
"Realizing Exploitation." Presentation to Real Worlds: Global Perspectives on the Politics of Reality Television, a scholars symposium held at The Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, 5 December 2008.
Dr Melissa Bellanta
Conference presentations
“Mother and Moonshine: Sentimental Songs and Rough Masculinity, 1880-1915”, Australian Historical Association Biennial Conference, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2008.
“Female Sexuality in Popular Australian Theatre, 1880-1900”. Network for Research in Women’s History Annual Conference, University of Melbourne, Melbourne, 2008.
“The Sentimental Carnival: Emotional Experience in Late-Victorian Variety Theatre”. British Association of Victorian Studies Conference, University of Leicester, Leicester, 2008.
“Rorty ’Ria and Red-Hot Maud: Modernity and ‘Low’ Femininity in Turn-of-the- Twentieth Century Australia”. British Association of Australian Studies Conference, University of London Royal Holloway, Egham, 2008.
“Such is Life: On Ned Kelly, Larrikins, and New-Millennial Masculinity”. International Association of Australian Studies Conference, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, 2008.
Seminar Presentations:
“The Larrikins’ Hop: Larrikinism and Late-Colonial Popular Theatre,” School of English, Media Studies and Art History Seminar, University of Queensland, 2008.
“The Maritime Strike of 1890: On Utopia and Class War,” History Work in Progress Day, University of Queensland, 2008.
Dr Melissa Gregg
Conference presentations
“Sustaining Online Cultures,” Roundtable at Sustaining Culture, Annual Conference of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia, Adelaide, December 2007.
“'A Momentarily Fixed Passion’: The Changing ‘We’ Of Cultural Studies’ Vocation” Cultural Studies Now, University of East London, Docklands, July 2007.
“Banal Bohemia: Blogging From The Ivory Tower Hot-Desk” Cultural Studies Now, University of East London, Docklands, July 2007.
28 “Work Where You Want: The Labour Politics Of The Mobile Office” Mobile Media, University of Sydney, July 2007.
Associate Professor Anita Harris
Conference presentations
“Young People and Political Engagement: the Local, the Informal and the Everyday”, Critical Research Issues in Social Psychology seminar series, University of Bath, UK, June 2008.
“Young People, Everyday Multiculturalism and the Displacement of White Hegemony”, Pedestrian Crossings: Youth and Everyday Multiculturalism workshop, Monash University Prato, Italy, June 2008.
“Young People’s Politics and the Microterritories of the Local”, the Australian Political Science Association conference, University of Queensland, (with Johanna Wyn), July 2008.
“The preoccupation with transitions and young people's experiences of the family”, the Australian Sociological Association conference, University of Melbourne, (with Sarah Lantz and Johanna Wyn), December 2008.
Dr Zala Volčič
Conference presentations
“Commercial Nationalism on Balkan TV” (with Mark Andrejevic). A paper presented at the Real Worlds: Global Perspectives on the Politics of Reality Television Symposium organized by Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania, USA, December 5, 2008.
“Balkan Reality TV: Some considerations” (with Mark Andrejevic). A paper presented at the Reel TV and Democracy conference, Istanbul, Turkey, Khadir Has University, 9-12 September, 2008.
“Power, Participation, Community Radio: Some Consideration from former Yugoslav region.” A paper presented at the IAMCR conference, Stockholm, Sweden, 17-21 August, 2008.
“Brand Yourself: Commodified Female Identities on Myspace”. A paper presented at the conference Glocal 2.0: Blogging: Evolution treated as Revolution, New York University of Skopje, Macedonia, 8-11 May, 2008.
“Cinema and music as hybrid art forms in Southeastern Europe.” A paper presented at the conference How Big is Your World – Cultural Policy and Globalization, Museum of World Culture, Göteborg, Sweden, April 10-13, 2008.
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